DEPARTMENT OF FISHERIES,

120
APPENDIX No. 4.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.
REPORT ON THE FISHERIES OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, FOR THE
YEAR OF 1888, BY MR. J. HUNTER DUVAR, INSPECTOR.
ALBRTON, 31st December, 1888.
'Io the
Honorable CaARLES H. Tuppia,
Minister of Marine and Fisheries.
Sin,—I have the honor to transmit Annual Report on the Fisheries of the Province
of Prince Edward Island for the year 1888, together with tabulated staternenta
of product and values,
Summary.
The fishery product of the year shows the large decrease in value of $160,5i3.1D
as compared with the returns of 1887. This deficit is due to a largely diminished
catch of mackerel and continued falling off in lobsters.
Indeed the mackerel fishery was a complete failure in quantity, the catch being
but one-half of that of last year, the figures being only 12,6i8 barrels against 24,07
barrels in 1887, that year itself having had but a small catch. This unJookeclfor
leficiency has not been so much owing to scarcity of fish, as to their exceeding wildness,
their not schooling freely, and their keeping very much in mid-sea instead of, at
usual, striking the shore. Hence seining was less productive than the old process of
hook-and-line, in consequence of which many seining crews abandoned seines and
'went back to the hook. Qualhy was generally superior. High prices have doae
something towards compensating for the poor catch, but not to the extent that an
average year at rnodc'rate prices would have done. The fishery wardens estimate that
there were 150 to 200 American seiners in the bay, and they are stated to have done
poorly.
When barrelled mackerel fetch a high price; it does not pay to can, therefore
this year shows no more than 34,360 one-pound cans, or less than 200 barrels. In
years of plenty of fish with low prices, from a quarter to over half a million of cans
have been put up.
In lobsters, 33 fewer factories, with 6,628 fewer traps, were in operation, re-
'suiting in a deficiency of 562,880 cans below the diminished product of last year..
"This is the lowest point the industry has yet touched, namely, a catch of 1,446,227
cans, which, although in itself a large quantity, representing eight to ten millions of
lobsters, contrasts strikingly with the return of only seven years since, in 1881, when
the product culminated in over six and a quarter millions of cans. So rapid a deca-.
deuce can only be set down to persistent overfishing. The lobsters canned average
little over 2 ounces of meat in each, it having taken 6, or more nearly seven fish
to fill a one-pound can. The small size of ma' erial used has naturally had the effect
of reducing the quality of the goods, and further affords a grievous proof that the
bulk of the lobsters used are young that have not reached the three to four years of
age at which they are capable of reproduction. The question of whether a short-